← Mini dictionary

Anxiety disorders

To speak of an anxiety disorder, the level of anxiety must be intense, disabling and long lasting. Feeling a great deal of stress before an exam or an intense fear right before you go bungee jumping, for example, is not suffering from an anxiety disorder.

You are constantly anxious and worried (and even more so during times of stress) about everything in your daily life.

You feel a strong anxiety when you are around other people, you are afraid of being judged, observed, and you tend to avoid expressing yourself in front of others, even isolating yourself.

You regularly experience panic attacks, or anxiety attacks, and you develop a fear that another attack will occur. A panic attack is an intense and frightening physical reaction (choking, palpitations, dizziness, shaking, sweating, etc.) that causes the fear of losing control, "going crazy" or even dying. It happens suddenly and lasts a few minutes.

A phobia is an excessive fear or anxiety in the presence of a specific object or situation, which you then try to avoid (phobia of flying, birds, crowds, etc.). You are aware that your anxiety is not "reasonable" but you cannot control it.

You have thoughts, images, which impose themselves on your mind called "obsessions". You know that they are inappropriate but cannot control them. You try to remove them from your mind by performing repetitive behaviours (washing hands, checking that the faucet is turned off, repeating words or numbers, etc.) which are called "compulsions".

After experiencing an event where you felt that your life or the life of another person was threatened (an assault, an accident, an illness, etc.) your brain is "traumatised". Immediately after the event, or even several weeks after it, you may begin to suffer from nightmares and flashbacks; insomnia, struggling to concentrate or remember; anger, sadness, guilt, or on the contrary feel strangely detached and numb.